by Neville Kennard, veteran preaching and practising capitalist

Sometimes when I am waiting in a queue I ponder, “What would I pay to not be waiting here, but to be in a fast lane?”

This can happen at traffic lights, doctors’ waiting rooms, airport check-in, airport security and wherever else the government is running things.

At airline check-ins, the long queue is mostly at the economy class counters, as business and first class give their premium-paying customers the benefit of some queue-jumping. At doctors’ waiting rooms, the waiting-time is a price we pay for “free” healthcare. At traffic lights, the queue-time is the price we pay for “free” roads.

Queues at counters of shops don’t persist for long. The shop owner sees the queue, which tells him that his product is popular, or underpriced, and he does something about it: he may put on another employee, or he may increase the price. Or a competitor opens up. Either way the queuing problem, the queuing-price (the time-price that the queuers pay), gets resolved. The business opportunity presented by the queue is grabbed by an entrepreneur.

With government-provided “free” services, the price mechanism is not allowed to work. The costly (in time) and inefficient government mechanism is to offer “free” stuff and ration the supply with a hidden price — of time in queue. Local councils have the “customers” (they don’t call them this — they may call them “clients,” but often see them as nuisances) waiting for approvals on development and buildings applications. This is very expensive and adds to construction costs and development costs.

So, how to take advantage of the business opportunity presented when there is a government-induced queue?

One way is corruption. Pay a fee (bribe?) to jump the queue. It may be very economic to pay a “facilitation fee” — over the counter or under the counter. Obviously, the facilitation fee could be formalised and legalised allowing urgent and important applications to be fast-tracked. There are many other ways for government departments to speed up the queuing time, and the very best, of course, is to eliminate the regulation that courses the queue in the first place. The next best is to privatise the approval service so that “authorised approvers” do it for profit.

The tragedy of the commons remains a relevant concept, and as governments take control of more and more, of our lives, our jobs, the economy, there are more and more “commons” and likely to be more and more queues, and increasing temptations for corruption/facilitation fees.

Queuing is a price we pay. We may not see our waiting time, our queuing, as part of the price, but it is. It is a cost (in time and inconvenience) we pay. In free markets, queues get resolved pretty quickly. In government services they don’t, and people wait, for example with “free” healthcare, sometimes for months or years, for their treatment — a price they must pay for this “free” or subsidised service.